DA case file: Steven Lake’s ‘revenge list’ delayed divorce

This June 15, 2010 booking photo provided by the Piscataquis County Sheriff's Office, shows Steven Lake, after his arrest for threatening his wife and their two children the previous day. Lake, 37, used a shotgun to kill 38-year-old Amy Lake and their two children, 12-year-old Monica and 13-year-old Coty, at their home in Dexter on Monday, police said.

BANGOR, Maine — Amy Lake might have left her husband sooner, but didn’t because he told her he would kill her and then seek revenge on a list of people who had wronged him. Most of the people on that list were members of Amy’s family.

According to documents released Tuesday by the Piscataquis County District Attorney’s Office, Steven Lake was full of threats. After holding his family at gunpoint on June 14, 2010, he told Amy he “may only get partway through his list” before authorities caught him and that “if I have to I’ll use a knife and I’ll do things to you you wouldn’t do to farm animals.”

Such was life at times in the Lake household, according to seven pages of case notes released Tuesday by District Attorney R. Christopher Almy. The notes include summaries of interviews done by Almy’s staff with Amy, Coty and Monica Lake — all of whom were gunned down Monday by Steven Lake, according to police.

Amy and the two children all told the DA’s investigators that they thought Steven Lake intended to kill himself one year ago Tuesday when he gathered them in a bedroom and reached for a pistol he kept hanging on his bedpost. He kept the gun at his side, said all three, but told them, “I’ve gone too far this time. There’s no going back.” Amy and the sobbing children kept telling Steven that they could work through their problems, which eventually led to a family hug.

Steven later claimed that he took the gun from its holster to get it away from his son, but he was arrested the next day and charged with criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon and domestic violence criminal threatening, charges that were the subject of a trial scheduled for next month.

Amy, a teacher, told investigators last August that all she wanted was “to not live in fear,” and for her husband to have a mental health examination, undergo anger management classes and take all his medications.

“She is not interested in having the defendant pay a fine or spend time in jail because of the effect it will have on her and the children,” reads the summary of an interview with Amy last August.

According to young Coty, hearing about his father’s horrible intentions became part of life. Last summer Steven told his 13-year-old son that a divorce from Amy would cost only 29 cents.

“Do you know what that means? That’s the price of a bullet,” Coty told his mother, according to the case file. “That means he’s going to shoot you.”